KDE4.5 desktop effects problems with nvidia at 1920x1080?

[Texstar]

Does your card work when you turn off KDE effects and enable compiz through drak3d at the higher resolution?

[littlenoodles]

Does your card work when you turn off KDE effects and enable compiz through drak3d at the higher resolution?

Yep.  Compiz works fine.  I guess that's an okay fallback, but all the more reason to hit on the KDE4 team and point out they don't have to obsolete my card.  And Compiz doesn't have the nice window grouping features of kwin.

Actually, I saw some posts on KDE's bugzilla about kwin getting confused about how nvidia was reporting certain capabilities.  Then trying to use them when they weren't really there.

If I can get an account there (no response yet to my signup), I'll try posting this as a bug.

[Animal]

I've found that disabling the blur effect helped out a lot

[T6]

in my old ati radeon 9200 that effect doesn't even want to work, in compiz i have similar limitations, the hardware is ok but limitations exist

[littlenoodles]

Followup.  Reported this to KDE bugzilla, and they marked it as a dup to another report.  Apparently, the nvidia driver wrongly reports some FBO feature as being present when it's not (or KDE misinterprets what the driver reports).  Anyway, KDE's going to revert the change where that started happening, so it's gonna work soon.  Yay!

[mikkl]

Another thing you *could* try is disabling blur, and seeing if that helps at all. It solves the problems with intel graphics drivers, so it's worth trying.

Blur is a known 4.5 problem with nvidia cards also.  On my machine (6200 at 1920*1280) blur slows kwin down to 27fps whereas it is a steady 100fps without blur.  In other words, my nvidia card is as bad as an intel card when blur is enabled.

mikkl

[wayne1932]

@littlenoodles

I agree 100% with your rant.  I've been having issues with sound.  alsa comes and goes.  I've had a long thread about it with no real solution.  This morning, after I had posted yesrday my problem was "resolved with reservations" I booted up with sound again not working. I went thru the same scenario and got it working again.  Just to be different I stopped alsa, and unchecked the start on boot, and rebooted.  Guess what?   When it booted up again, I had sound inspite of supposedly not starting on boot.  At least a couple of the programs that use alsa worked -- using alsa. 

No explaining it, just the rolling release problem I think.

[DeBaas]

Just for your reference, installed 2010.07 KDE on AMD Sempron 2400, nVidia MX440 8xAGP 1G mem.
No isues wih with 3D only a bit slow....
After update to KDE 4.5 I can no longer use desktop effects, and Firefox has just a black screen so are the config screens.

[littlenoodles]

One step forward, 2 steps back.

Got a bunch of updates last night, including some KDE4 stuff and a new nvidia driver.  Mixed results.  Kwin effects work better than before, still not usable.  Similar symptoms, but happen less frequently.  Compiz still works.

Something also seems to have broken in my nvidia settings.  Almost looks as if it's not running in 24-bit color mode any more, though I have video set for 'Automatic, 24 bits'.  The PCLOS signon screen used to be beautiful, but now the menu bar at the bottom has gaps in it (where it used to look glassy), and the colors in general seem washed out.  The PCLOS bull on the KDE splash screen is just flat white, and the colors in general seem washed out - gradients less 3D'ish.  Is it possible that KDE in trying to 'fix' my nvidia settings reverted to a lower color depth?

I tried switching to 1280x1024 resolution (which used to work fine).  Still works, but the color depth changes are still there.  Is there a way to determine the color depth on a running system?

Did the latest updates include changes to the PCLOS signon or splash screens, or am I really seeing some new video problem?

[littlenoodles]

About the color depth 'change'.  I think I must be imagining things, because I just booted from the original PCLOS 2010 live CD, and it looks the same.  But I do think the logon and splash screens have changed.  The splash screen used to have a shiny medallion with the bull logo inside.  Now it just has an all white bull logo - larger and without the medallion.  When did that happen?

[DBobb]

I know a couple of years ago, there were some computer stores (real computer stores, not big box stores which only sell pre-builds) which still sold PCI cards. I wonder if this is still the case.

[mikkl]

I know a couple of years ago, there were some computer stores (real computer stores, not big box stores which only sell pre-builds) which still sold PCI cards. I wonder if this is still the case.

An example:  http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0305903

If it's a 6 year old computer, you may want to confirm that it really is PCI only and does not have AGP as an option.  My 7-year old HP has AGP.

mikkl

[ethoms]

@littlenoodles: I feel your pain, same thing happened to me, only I have a 6100 series card. I tried different kernels, no joy. Then I read this thread, thankfully as it saved a lot of time debugging it myself. Turning off the blur effect did it for me, what a difference it made!! So now I'm very happy with my KDE 4.5 (only stable on PCLOS and Arch AFAIK).

To those that suggest he buys a new card, I say com'on guys, this is not a good enough answer. I just bought a new motherboard for my micro ATX multimedia centre (attached to 1920x1080 TV) just because my onboard ATI radeon was not supported by proprietary driver anymore.  I don't want to have to buy something else, it's not as if the 6 series or 5 series are not good enough for KWin efffects, buying a 9 series is overkill, unless you play 3D games. If nvidia still supports it, so should KDE team.

I wish I could help you more Bee Hoon, but I don't know my way around X11, KDE4 and nvidia drivers enough. Perhaps try disabling all your effects and enable then one by one to find the culprit, may shed some light on it.

[T6]

"To those that suggest he buys a new card, I say com'on guys, this is not a good enough answer"

if the hardware you have is not enough for your requirements or the hardware itself won't work properly anymore the only solution you can find is hack the device or replace the device, in a integrated video card hack it is almost impossible so all you have left is replace video card

the idea of replace hardware is not what most people want to hear but is a reality for everyone

something that you want to do eventually and is better to do it when there is a reason to do it, not just when windows feels slow so you replace the whole machine because someone said that you should do it every year

[ethoms]

"something that you want to do eventually and is better to do it when there is a reason to do it, not just when windows feels slow so you replace the whole machine because someone said that you should do it every year"

I agree entirely, and probably someone with 5 series should buy something new. However that much is obvious to littlenoodles, if that was what he wanted, he would not have posted here. A solution should be found, there may be many other in the same boat, it would be nice to have the choice to stay on the existing hardware. As you said, this is not crappy Windows, this is linux, freedom, choice and efficiency, older hardware should still be made to work, albeit without the new effects / features.

Please don't get me wrong, I know we're all trying to help. But just saying the solution is to buy new hardware is not a good advert for PCLOS or linux.